In October 1956 he became the new First Secretary of the Central ommittee of the Polish United Workers' Party. In Poland, despite several violent clashes in Poznan, Władysław Gomułka, the former general secretary of the Workers' Party, was rehabilitated after being arrested in 1951. In central and eastern Europe, with the death of Stalin and the start of de-Stalinisation launched by the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, the populations of several satellite states attempted to cast off the Russian yoke. The same month it signed a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance, known as the Warsaw Pact, with Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. When the Federal Republic of Germany joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in May 1955, the Soviet Union responded immediately. Although the negotiations on European security, disarmament and East-West relations made little progress, the meeting ended on a note of détente between the various protagonists.Ī few months later, in September 1955, the West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow for the first time, an encounter that led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.ĭespite these encouraging signs the distrust and ideological opposition between the two blocs continued. Austria immediately became a member of the Council of Europe, joining the United Nations Organisation on 14 November 1955.įinally the heads of government of the four great powers (United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union) met in Geneva from 18 to 23 July 1955. On 5 November it enshrined the principle of neutrality in its Constitution: a change the international community promptly recognised. On 15 May 1955 Austria and the four occupying powers (United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union) signed the Austrian State Treaty, which ended occupation of the country and restored Austria as a neutral, independent, democratic nation, with the same borders as in 1938. It had to come to terms with technological progress by the Soviet Union, which tested its first atomic weapon in 1949, with the first hydrogen bomb following in 1953.Įast-West relations only began to improve after the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953, with Nikita Khrushchev emerging as the undisputed party leader of the Soviet Union in 1955.

To complicate matters further, the United States was no longer the only country with nuclear weapons. This combined diplomacy with the threat of massive retaliation. In 1953 he opted for the so-called ‘new look’ strategy. Though initially in favour of a policy of firmness towards communism, based on the ‘rollback’ doctrine, President Eisenhower nevertheless had to make allowance for the risk of escalation and the hazards of direct nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. In the United States General Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, with a corresponding shift in American foreign policy on the Soviet Union. Although the Korean war was geographically limited, its international repercussions showed that the two great powers could not openly confront one another without running the risk of widespread conflict. Only in July 1953 was a fragile peace restored along the 38th parallel with the signature of an armistice at Panmunjom. Indirectly this precipitated rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. The region became a bloody ideological battleground, pitting the West against the communist world. In June 1950 the Cold War moved from Europe to south-east Asia as communist troops from the North invaded South Korea. No other country succeeded in completely escaping from the Warsaw Pact as had Romania and Albania.At the start of the 1950s East-West relations were characterised by constant tension and distrust between the two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, Grechko initiated programs meant to preempt Romanian doctrinal heresies from spreading to other Pact members. By the time Andrei Antonovich Grechko, Soviet general and organizer of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, assumed command of the Warsaw Pact in 1960, both Romania and Albania had for all practical purposes defected from the Pact. Romania remained a formal member of the Warsaw Pact largely due to dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's interest in preserving the threat of a Pact invasion allowing him to sell himself to the people as a loyal Romanian nationalist and to maintain privileged access to his NATO counterparts and a seat at various influential European forums. Albania officially left the Pact in 1968, out of protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact-led Russian Troops. Yugoslavia had broken with the Soviet Union before the Warsaw Pact was created. The three countries completely rejected the Soviet doctrine formulated for the Warsaw Pact.

Yugoslavia, Romania, and Albania were exceptions.

Treaties and blocs quizlet